Lethal Regulation: State‐Corporate Crime and the United Kingdom Government's New Mercenaries

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2003.00271.x
Published date01 December 2003
Date01 December 2003
AuthorDave Whyte
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2003
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 575±600
Lethal Regulation: State-Corporate Crime and the United
Kingdom Government's New Mercenaries
Dave Whyte
*
Markets for private military security are enjoying a period of sustained
growth, during which there has been a repackaging of `mercenary
outfits' and `private armies' as legitimate, fully incorporated private
military companies (PMCs). This paper presents a critique of the
dominant view of the new mercenaries and examines the regulation of
private military security currently being proposed by the United
Kingdom government, arguing that its purpose should be understood
as the facilitation rather than the restraint of those markets. States are
playing a formative role in the expansion of private military markets.
In contrast to the dominant themes of the literature on globalization,
the emergence of those markets should be understood as an expansion
rather than a diminution of the coercive and violent capacities of
states. Western states are facilitating new modes of delivering terror
and violence that are also likely to increase, rather than reduce, the
incidence of state-corporate crimes.
INTRODUCTION
The mercenary soldier is currently undergoing an image makeover. The
ruthless `dog of war', the `soldier of fortune' or freelance mercenary who
will fight anywhere for any paymaster if the price is right is, we are told,
consigned to a distant past. Les affreux are now not quite as terrible as they
were in the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of the privately contracted soldier.
1
Rarely do we see the `mercenaries' of today referred to as such. Private
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*School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England
A debt is owed to to Biko Agozino, Courtney Davis, Stuart Lister, Steve Tombs, and
Clive Walker for invaluable comments and discussions at various stages of this paper's
development. I am also grateful for the useful advice provided by the journal's
anonymous reviewers.
1 W. Burchett and D. Roebuck, The Whores of War: mercenaries today (1977).
combat and security outfits are widely known in press reports and in political
and academic discourse as `private military companies' (PMCs). They have
been reconstituted as respectable businesses that avoid compromising the
interests of their domicile states and refrain from illegal or unethical
operations.
2
Thus, according to United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw:
Today's world is a far cry from the 1960s, when private military activity
usually meant mercenaries of the rather unsavoury kind involved in post-
colonial or neo-colonial conflicts.
3
The present day PMC is more likely to be fully integrated into the
economy, incorporated as a legitimate company, and registered for tax
reporting and accounting purposes.
4
PMCs are now involved in a range of
legitimate operations: protecting non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and United Nations (UN) organizations in high profile `humanitarian
missions',
5
de-mining,
6
and protecting other legitimate corporate interests,
most commonly in the extraction (mining and oil) industries.
7
Those
trends are part of a broader trend in the privatization of state military
apparatuses. For example, private contractors now provide as much as 80
per cent of British Army training.
8
The United States Department of
Defence employs more sub-contracted staff now than it retains on the
government pay roll.
9
The rewards for the new mercenaries are con-
siderable. There are currently at least 90 private military companies
operating in up to 110 countries worldwide.
10
It is estimated that 8 per cent
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2 D. Brooks, `Messiahs or Mercenaries? The future of international private military
services' (2000) 7 International Peacekeeping 130; L. Serewicz, `Globalisation,
Sovereignty and the Military Revolution: from mercenaries to private international
security companies' (2002) 39 International Politics 75±89; D. Kassebaum, `A
Question of Facts: the legal use of private security firms in Bosnia' (2000) 38
Columbian J. of Transnational Law 581±602; L. Zarate, `The Emergence of a New
Dog of War: Private International Security Companies, international law and the
new world disorder' (1998) 34 Stanford J. of International Law 75±162.
3 J. Straw, `Foreword by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs' in Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Private Military Companies:
options for regulation (2001±02; HC 577) 5.
4 Although many are in fact domiciled in offshore tax havens. See P. Singer,
`Corporate Warriors: the Rise and Ramifications of the Privatized Military Industry'
(2001/02) 26 International Security 186±220.
5 C. Spearin, `Private Security Companies and Humanitarians: a corporate solution to
securing humanitarian spaces?' (2001) 8 International Peacekeeping 20±43.
6 Brooks, op. cit., n. 2.
7 J. Cilliers and P. Mason (eds.), Peace, Profit or Plunder? The privatization of
security in war-torn African societies (1999).
8 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, op. cit., n. 3, p. 13.
9 Select Committee on Foreign Affairs,Ninth Report, Private Military Companies
(2001±02; H.C. 922) para. 8.
10 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists/Centre for Public Integrity
(ICIJ/CPI), Making a Killing: the Business of War (2002). The overall number of
ßBlackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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